Below are frequently asked questions (FAQs) that are applicable to migrant workers, brands and partners.
What is LaborVoices?
Where is LaborVoices?
How does LaborVoices technology work? How will workers use it?
What problem does LaborVoices solve?
Who else could use LaborVoices technology?
How does LaborVoices make money?
What risks does LaborVoices face?
How can researchers use LaborVoices?
What kinds of advertisers is LaborVoices targeting?
What technologies will LV support?
How do you get users? Who will implement LaborVoices locally?
How can non-profits and unions work with LaborVoices?
What can non-profits and unions get from working with LaborVoices?
What are the requirements for implementing partners?
Why does LV require these commitments?
How does LaborVoices verify that partners are acting responsibly?
Q: What is LaborVoices?
A: LaborVoices is a for-profit company with a social mission: ending labor abuses by enforcing labor market transparency. We increase workers’ ability to fact-check prospective employment conditions, enabling them to make more informed choices, including labor migration choices. We market access to labor market intelligence—gleaned from our users—to supply chain managers.
Q: Where is LaborVoices?
A: LaborVoices is incorporated and based in Sunnyvale, in California’s Silicon Valley. We have an on-going pilot project in Bangalore, India.
Q: How does LaborVoices technology work? How will workers use it?
A: LaborVoices technology allows workers to fact-check employers using their own mobile phone hand-sets. Workers are able to request, create and share information on their own working conditions and thereby contribute to accessible reputations of their employers and factories. We help workers help each other.
Q: Why do workers need LaborVoices technology? What problem are you trying to solve?
A: The exploitation and trafficking of workers is well-documented. Migrant workers in particular are vulnerable because they must rely on very poor information sources—they don’t know whom to trust. With better access to accurate reputations of the players in their labor supply chains—recruiters, sub-contractors, and employers—they will fact-check the rumors they hear, and make more informed choices at the most critical stage—pre-migration.
When workers are well-informed, employers, labor recruiters, and service providers are forced to compete for workers, rather than the other way around. Those players who earn workers’ trust have an advantage over more abusive competitors, effectively raising the labor costs for abusive labor supply chains and trafficking conditions. LaborVoices is putting control over labor supply chains literally into workers’ hands.
Q: Who else may benefit from LaborVoices technology?
A: We expect strong demand for this opinion and reputation information from supply-chain managers, labor activists, employers, governments and consumers.
Brands can choose among suppliers based on long-term reputations in addition to spot inspections, and effectively respond to activists. Governments can better judge working conditions and intervene where violations are likely. Institutional buyers such as state and local governments and universities, which often have strict constraints on their sourcing conditions, can make informed choices. Unions and labor activists get feedback from workers about their own operations, as well as neighboring factories, and can adjust their advocacy and outreach strategies accordingly. Labor brokers and other service providers are rewarded for playing the role of an honest intermediary. Employers get feedback from workers to compare against other sources, like unions or NGOs. Compliant employers gain reputation benefits, and can attract workers with appropriately lower wages.
Q: How do you get users? Who will implement LaborVoices locally?
A: Outreach in the form of user participation require significant support from worker-related organizations. Partnership with local and international NGO partners, non-profits and unions will provide both access to an initial user base as well as expertise to draw future users.
Q: How does LaborVoices make money?
A: LV is currently in between the bootstrapping and investment stage. We are exploring profit-sharing relationships with local mobile carriers, as well as advertising relationships with employers and service providers (e.g., migrant-related job postings, micro-loans, transportation, accommodation). We plan to offer data analytics on the communication stream to third parties, as well as seek expansion relationships with U.S. and European importers (e.g., garment and footwear brands).
Q: What risks does LaborVoices face, in applying this revolutionary social initiative?
A: There are several risks LaborVoices faces. Most of these risks have been solved by other commercial mobile technology vendors.
- Retribution Risk: Entrenched interests, whether employers or labor brokers, could take action against vocal workers. LV will take all reasonable measures to keep users safe.
- Legal Risk: There could be libel or slander implications for electronically hosting personal opinions about individuals and organizations. LV will be protected by free-speech statutes, depending on local jurisdictions.
- Brand Risk: Our users could criticize our cutomers. LV will warn partners to expect increased scrutiny.
- Market Risk: Since the start-up costs are low, and the value and revenue-generating capacity high, this endeavor risks being overtaken by imitating competitors. LV is aggressively pursuing sustained relationships with local partners to secure our market presence.
Q: How can researchers use LaborVoices?
A: Effective research on these populations is fundamentally hampered by their low visibility, marginalized status, and relocation patterns LaborVoices can facilitate. Migration research such as real-time monitoring of migration flows (instead of snapshots), constant attitudinal feedback (instead of surveys) and continuous perception indexing (to complement incentive experiments).
LV offers a first step in this direction. By tapping workers, themselves, we gather incredibly diverse, sophisticated, and openly-biased information on migration, employment, human services and life at the bottom-of-the-pyramid—available freely via the LaborVoices open information platform.
Armed with troves of data, researchers gain rare insight into business and governance models in remote regions of the world. We hope developers will help us aggregate worker sentiment into useful analytical tools, applicable both to academia and activism, social workers and supply-chain managers.
Q: What kinds of advertisers are LaborVoices targeting?
A: Among advertisers with an interest in accessing the BOP market, LV-A will solicit advertising for products and services of particular interest to our migrant labor users, including micro-loans, micro-savings, money transfer, insurance, travel, and labor recruiting services. Business participants in existing fair-trade certification mechanisms will be our first targets, as well as members of industry organizations with an eye toward labor rights protection, such as the MFA Forum (clothing), the EICC (electronics), and the EITI (extractives).
Q: What technologies will LV support now and in the future?
A: Specifically, four areas of technology need to be addressed: user-side hardware and software, server-side hardware and software.
User-side Hardware and Software: One of the advantages of our approach is that users can use existing hardware with no additional software. For example, the bare-bones Nokia 1100 model phone, by some accounts the most popular model, globally, is fully capable of implementing our system with no adjustments.
Server-side Hardware and Software: LaborVoices will create a new, independent database of worker opinions of employers. The major hardware requirement is a server and connection board located in-country, with consistent, wired access to the local phone network.
At later stages, we will create access and interoperability for the LaborVoices database, we will add. Automated tagging and transcription of voice data, translation of transcripts and SMS data into a common database language (English) feeds for new data.
Q: How can non-profits and unions work with LaborVoices?
A: The easiest way for a non-profit or union to get involved is to take advantage of the data and analysis that LaborVoices publishes freely, and use that for their own activism and advocacy. As we develop data sets and release them after our embargo process, we hope that users worldwide will find their own value in mining this information, and will eventually see value in partnering more closely with LaborVoices.
Q: What can non-profits and unions get from LaborVoices?
A: We’re always looking for great local organizations, like non-profits, unions and community-based organizations, which we call implementing partners. There are several benefits for these partners.
Benefits (typical):
- Resources—funding and in-kind technology—to support LaborVoices-related work within the implementing partner’s organization, including staffing and user-recruiting.
- Training (intensive and on-going) on how best to operate the LaborVoices system, and how to get the most out of it.
- Early access to pre-embargo data and analysis. (The same stuff that brands buy, at the same time they get it.)
- Shaping the data collection and analysis process through our customer advisory board.
- Assistance from LaborVoices in fundraising efforts, including monitoring and evaluation of existing programs.
Q: What’s the catch? Why does LaborVoices offer these benefits to implementing partners?
A: Implementing partners provide a real value to LaborVoices, by helping LV expand and reach vulnerable workers and by hosting and administering our technology. Implementing partners should be prepared to fulfill several responsibilities to maintain their partnership status.
Responsibilities (typical):
- Staffing at 50% of one person’s time for one month, then two person-hours per week afterward.
- Space for LaborVoices work at the implementing partner’s headquarters, with a desk and computer with Internet access for the duration.
- Web-based maintenance of the LaborVoices system.
- Recruiting and maintaining a set of users from the implementing partner’s constituency.
Q: Why does LaborVoices require these commitments from partners?
A: We believe that long-term relationships with local partners are key to our success, and we’re willing to invest in those relationships. We believe that implementing partners should do the same, and that co-location at the partner’s headquarters is a necessary commitment.
Q: How does LaborVoices ensure that implementing partners are upholding their responsibilities?
A: LaborVoices is highly outcome-focused. A partner that recruits and maintains a large, engaged group of users will find the LaborVoices partnership most rewarding. Our enterprise hinges on the quality of experience that our worker-users have. Implementing partners are key to helping us maintain that quality. We monitor the quantity and quality of users’ interactions with the LaborVoices system, and factor that into our compensation for implementing partners in a transparent and fair way.